Attempted LeBron chalk toss prank prompts evacuation of UCF building

Don’t run into a crowded classroom, do this and yell something. Just don’t.

As a millennial — what? it is true, apparently! — I am very familiar with pranks, and how much they matter. I understand that virality is the most important thing there is, and that if the pursuit of a killer prank that’ll rack up millions of favs/likes/views/posts/reposts/tweets/RTs/shares/reshares/thinkpieces/rethinkpieces winds up ruffling a few feathers, well, that’s just the cost of doing Big Internet Business. The ends justify the memes, always.

I mean, I get that — again: millennial — but evidently, the University of Central Florida Police Department doesn’t. They’re more concerned with boring, decidedly not wavy things like “safety,” “security,” and “ensuring that students, professors and staff aren’t unwittingly exposed to potentially dangerous materials.” I know: lame, right? It’s like they’ve never even seen Reddit’s Rising tab.

Anyway, here’s what happened at UCF on Wednesday:

#UCFAlert: Suspicious incident in Business Admin I. Police are responding and searching for a man described as 6'2, white, and wearing a red and white basketball jersey. If seen, please contact UCFPD immediately by calling 911.

Sure, that’s not exactly what LeBron said nearly eight years ago during “The Decision,” and James has mostly tabled the pre-game ritual for the past half-dozen years. But why let that get in the way of a killer prank?

“Unfortunately, with the current threat situation the way it is, our fire partners said we needed to treat it as a hazmat situation,” Beary said.

And so, they did. About 90 minutes after the initial report started raising eyebrows, the UCF police gave the all-clear, confirming that the powder used in the chalk-toss prank was not anthrax or something like it, but rather …

UCF police later said that they’d identified the two men involved in the incident: the guy wearing the LeBron jersey “who interrupted class and threw powder into the air,” and a second man with a pair of backpacks “who recorded the disturbance.” They “indicated their actions were a joke and that they didn’t mean to cause any harm,” which is nice.

The lesson: the next time you’re aiming to go viral, consider whether or not your actions might instead have the effect of forcing a building’s evacuation, locking down a portion of a university’s campus and inconveniencing scores of people. If the answer even approaches yes, maybe just chill out and take a few plays off, my friend. Or, in fact, all the plays off. Just exit the game, really. Retire, raise that LeBron jersey to the rafters of your dorm room, and get your prank fix by watching “American Vandal,” like the rest of us.